Madness Retaliation/Final Battle
The Final Battle of Madness Retaliation puts the player characters through a grueling five-round battle against the Auditor; or rather, the forces summoned by his Improbability Drive. Completing the battle ends the game. Beginning the Final Battle After raiding the A.A.H.W's secret cloning facility, killing The Savior, The Clown, and hundreds of assorted enemies, and navigating a bizarre maze in the Auditor's tower, the four AAA specialists enter the Auditor's office: a spacious white void of a room, with the only visible features being a large desk, an office chair, and a lone locker. The latter is of the most concern to the player, as it contains the DNA vials that the team was sent to retrieve. After making sure that your equipment is set and your game is saved, open the locker and try to take the vials. Before you can retrieve the DNA samples, the screen suddenly goes black, and the message "DON'T TOUCH THAT" appears in big red letters. As the room reappears, the furniture slides into the floor, and a screen appears on the wall, displaying the Auditor himself. After surveying your team, he says "GET OUT OF MY OFFICE" and the Final Battle begins! Round 1: Ambush! For his first attack, the Auditor summons two Elite 1337 Agents (20 HP, 2 AC, 5 Max AP and +7 AP Gain) and an Armored A.T.P. Agent (32 HP, 4 AC, 6 Max AP and +3 AP Gain) on either side of the team. The A.T.P.s are armed with Steyr AUG rifles, the 1337 Agents on the right side of the screen carry Desert Eagles, and the 1337 Agents on the left carry Sawed-off shotguns. This is far from the most threatening lineup in the game, but the Auditor adds one major caveat; the enemies get the first move instead of you. This means that your first CQB and Heavy characters will be taking the brunt of the fire, and if you're not adequately equipped, the battle could be over before it even really begins. To survive the ambush, have at least one of your characters outfitted with gear that provides high HP or Armor Class; any characters killed in the attack will respawn on your turn, provided you remembered to charge up the Portable Improbability Drive beforehand. If you survived the preemptive assault, defeating the enemies will be a fairly simple task - you've seen them all before. As usual, focus your armor-piercing attacks on the Armored Agents, stunning the Elite 1337s with JHP Ammo or Sanford's Hook to keep them quiet. Alternately, you can try to stun the Armored Agents and kill off the Elite 1337s, but with the former's AC of 5, it's a bit riskier than the alternative. One more thing to keep in mind is that the next round will begin immediately after the last enemy falls. As such, you may want to leave the last foe alive (preferably stunned) until your team's AP regenerates a little, and then use the character with the highest AP to finish off the final goon. Round 2: Magnified Problems When the last minion falls, the Auditor says, "SRSLY? FINE. LET'S PLAY", and uses his Improbability Drive to respawn the soldiers and magnify the Elite 1337 Agents, doubling their HP. Despite the changes, the tactics remain similar; save your armor-piercing attacks for the A.T.P Agents and stun the Mag Agents. Killing the Agents on the left side will make life a little easier, as their shotguns do twice the damage of the other Mag Agents' Desert Eagles, and their flanking formation makes range a non-issue. With the latter's higher HP, it's also easier to stall and regenerate your AP before killing the final foes - you will definitely need as much offensive variety as possible for the next round. After killing his minions a second time, the Auditor says, "NOT BAD", but notes that the Improbability Drive has recharged. With a sneer of "OH LOOK, I CAN KILL YOU NOW", he backs up to the main menu and presses the "TACTICAL NUKE" option... Round 3: Send in the Clones ...only for a pair of Saucy Clones to drop into the battlefield. The Auditor's eyes burst aflame as he bellows, "THE HELL? THAT IS NOT A NUKE!", before yelling "TECH SUPPORT!" and shutting off his screen for the time being. Although far preferable to a nuke, Saucy Clones are extremely dangerous to an unprepared team. They are immune to TAC Scan and Flashbangs, are only vulnerable to the same weapon they are currently using (always a mimic of one of your team's equipped weapons), and randomly switch weapons whenever they are damaged. Meanwhile, their gear gives them massive AP potential (13 Max AP and +9 AP Gain), which allows them to attack extremely frequently every turn. Despite their danger, the strategy for Saucy Clones is fairly simple; send the character with the corresponding weapon to attack them until they switch weapons or die. If they start blocking attacks and saying things like "SORRY" or "WHATEVER", you're not doing any damage - check their weapon again and match it to something your team has equipped. If you run out of AP for the necessary weapon, throw a Smoke Grenade to reduce the damage they'll do on their turn. Another option is to have someone with a "Clown Mask" get right in the face of the Clones, drawing their fire and catching them in the explosion. However, this is rather draining on P.I.D. charges, and you've still got a ways to go before the end of the battle, so try conventional tactics unless you really can't win with them and you've got P.I.D. charges to spare. After the Saucy Clones are disposed of, the screen comes back on, revealing an A.T.P. engineer debugging the Auditor's Improbability Drive. The engineer replaces the "TACTICAL NUKE" option with "SAUCY DROP" - explaining the apparent malfunction - and then restarts the computer for automatic updates (to which the Auditor says, "UGH. WINDOWS."). Round 4: All-Out Assault When the computer is booted up, the Auditor says "FINALLY. LET'S FINISH THIS" before inputting a ridiculous number of commands into his Improbability Drive, activating several effects: #A huge group of enemies is spawned on the left side of the screen, including (from left to right): #*Two Saucy Clones #*Two Armored A.T.P. Agents, armed with Steyr AUGs #*Two Elite 1337 Agents, armed with Sawed-off Shotguns #*A Mag Zombie, wearing "Assault Armor" #*A Disco Clown #The player characters are forcibly moved to the right side of the screen, as though they had just entered the room. However, their positions are shuffled; the first CQB character is in the back column with the Assault character, and the Heavy character is in the front column with the second CQB character. #A Smoke Grenade is deployed on the battlefield. With this build established, the Auditor prepares one final surprise, attempting to activate the "RELEASE CLONES" option. Unfortunately for him, the Improbability Drive again shorts out due to a lack of power, prompting the Auditor to grumble "DONKEY BALLS" and "#$%@ING WINDOWS" as it restarts and begins recharging. For your first action, move your high-HP characters to the front of the line, in order to take the incoming enemy fire. If you can spare a Flashbang, it'll stun all but the Saucy Clones, greatly reducing the damage you'll take on the enemy turn. Consider moving your other characters around to get in a position to attack next turn, or just have them hold their position to regenerate more AP. If you survive the enemy counterattack, you'll have a chance to start prioritizing the opposition. The Saucy Clones are a big threat, so you should target them first - but if they switch to weapons with stunning properties and you manage to stun them, consider focusing on the rest of the enemies while they're dizzy. The Disco Clown is another problematic foe thanks to its stunning explosion - remember to heal your characters as much as possible (especially the ones in front) before going after it, especially if there's other foes still active, and consider leaving it for after the Saucy Clones are downed. You've seen the Elite 1337s and Armored A.T.P.s in earlier rounds (not to mention all over the facility), so you should know how to deal with them once more dangerous foes are eliminated. The Mag Zombie is resilient but a relatively low offensive threat - stunning it (preferably with the Sanford's Hook/Sanford's Head combo) is all you need to do until the rest of the enemies are killed. Once again, try to leave one enemy alive and stun-locked until you can regenerate most of your team's AP - there's one more round to go, but it's a tough one. Round 5: Send in the Clones, Part 2 The Improbability Drive finishes recharging as you finish off the last of your opposition in Round 4, allowing the Auditor to resume where he left off - activating the "RELEASE CLONES" option. Once again, he is interrupted, this time by a commotion on his end - namely, Hank bursting in, guns blazing. The Auditor clashes with Hank, using his shadow machetes and a M60 machine gun, but the screen goes black before a definite winner can be seen. However, the Auditor then says, "DON'T THINK I FORGOT ABOUT YOU GUYS." and finally confirms the "RELEASE CLONES" option, deploying the AAHW's strongest soldiers: clones of Hank, Sanford, and Deimos. See here for a detailed description of each clone and how to defeat them. Category:Articles needing Images Category:Madness Retaliation